


Plumage

by RandomOneShot



Category: Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: And Sephiroth would seriously like to know what is going on, Cloud is not a happy person these days, Conspiracies, Dimensional Travel, Neither is Cloud, Orphans, PTSD, Tifa is well on her way to joining them, Time Travel, Vincent can share his well earned gloom with a younger generation now, mental trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2018-07-14 08:59:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7164581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomOneShot/pseuds/RandomOneShot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cloud would have liked to say it was the sword or the eyes, but really, it was the hair. No one had hair like that except his mom, himself, and, well, this guy. So naturally he had to follow him. The trouble didn't start till after that, though.</p><p>(Cloud would have liked to say that the death of Chaos sent him back to his own world and all was well. Cloud would have liked to say a lot of things. But all he can say these days seems to be, "I'm sorry.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was the man’s hair.

Cloud would have liked to say that it was the sword – a monstrosity of a blade that was bigger than the man carrying it – or the eyes – because he knew what the glow meant, how could he not? – but really, it was the hair. The stranger came into town wearing a full length cloak with a hood that shadowed his face and only let the glowing blue SOLDIER eyes shine through, but it fell down for a moment when he tilted his head back to drink from the cup that Mrs. Arkengel handed him. And there it was, that chocobo hair that he got teased for on the head of a man he had never seen before.

Except he thought that he had.

The man looked like him. Kind of. Maybe, if Cloud were ten years older, with darker skin and some scars and never smiled.

But the hair? Identical.

The man had come to Nibelheim early in the morning and rented a room at the inn. The whole town had known of his arrival before noon and rumors were multiplying like rabbits as each person added their two cents as to why a SOLDIER was sent to their little town. The last time such a thing had happened was when a hard winter drove two dragons down from the mountain. Nibelheim was evacuated for a week until help had arrived. Fortunately the collateral damage was negligible. However, it was currently summer. There had not been any monsters near the town in almost a month.

When the man had emerged in the late afternoon, Mayor Lockhart had asked him what he was doing at Nibelheim, what Shinra had sent him for, whether there was any danger, etc. The man had simply waved him off, saying he was passing through on his way to Rocket Town for some time off. That had killed off most of the rumors, though Jacob Whitely was still insisting the SOLDIER had to be there for some kind of secret mission. Cloud was not inclined to believe him, even if Jacob hadn’t pushed him into a fence earlier. If there was something going on in Nibelheim, the Shinra Company would have told the townspeople or evacuated them.

So Cloud had been ready to content himself with just another glimpse of his idols, cherishing the memory as he did the few others, except then Mrs. Arkengel had offered the man a glass of water as he was leaving the item shop with more medicine than anyone Cloud had ever seen carry at once and, well, the hair. Cloud’s hair.

So, he followed.

It was not a stalker thing. Cloud did not want to steal anything, just to ask a few questions. Maybe not even that, because both his parents were only children, three of his grandparents too, he knew his family tree, _it was just a coincidence_ , but the man was a fast walker and Cloud could not keep up when they started past the old mansion. The road became rough and unreliable at that point, and even a country boy like him had trouble moving fast without falling and breaking something. It was an even harder time trying to go up the road quickly without making any noise.

He really should not have been surprised to see the man waiting for him around the next bend.

( _I am officially the worst spy ever._ )

“What are you doing up here?” asked the man.

“…Hunting,” Cloud said after far too long, and then kicked himself because without any weapons on him? Yeah, _no one_ would buy that. So stupid.

“Mm-hm,” the man muttered, looking every bit as convinced as Cloud thought he would. “Well, I don’t hear anything but monsters for a mile out, so why don’t you try your luck lower down the mountain.”

It was not a suggestion.

The man moved away from the mountain side, that massive sword no more bother than a backpack to him. Cloud watched him go, feeling like he had just been weighed, measured and found wanting for something important that he could not name.

“Wait!”

The man stopped. Cloud was not sure why, but he was willing to take any chance he could get.

But then what?

“Excuse me, strange man I have never met before. I followed you out into the monster infested wilderness because I’ve been watching you all day and I saw that hair of yours. Might we be related somehow?”

Mmmm, _no._

“Let me come with you. I know the way through the mountains.”

The man started walking again. “No thanks.”

( _Damn it damn it no think of something._ )

“Then take me back to the town, please! I thought I saw a dragon behind me!”

And yes, that was the best he could come up with.

The stranger stopped again, but Cloud saw his face and it was not irritated. Instead, the man was half amused, half pitying. It was almost worse like that.

“There aren’t any dragons this low. Nice try. Go home.”

And crash went Cloud’s hopes.

…No, there was one way left.

“So, did you ever live in Nibelheim?” Cloud asked.

The man blinked. He had not been expecting that.

“Why do you ask?”

“You know where everything is. You never asked for directions, whether in town or through the mountains. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you passing through before, and neither does anyone else. So, did you maybe live here a really long time ago and no one remembers?”

( _Mom said she only came back home after everyone died and left the house to her but maybe someone just left_.)

The man was staring at him differently. His face was almost impressed.

“You got that from a question I didn’t ask? Smart,” the man almost whispered the last part. It sounded almost sad.

“Did you?” Cloud asked, almost breathless. His heart was pounding. The whole situation was stupid, more than likely just something he was blowing out of proportion, but if he was right….

“C… uh, kid, why do you want to know? Is this why you followed me? Just to ask a question?”

“Well… it’s important,” Cloud said slowly. “Nibelheim’s small. We don’t have a lot to brag about. If someone from our town got into SOLDIER, then it would be pretty neat.”

And that was not a lie. In the whole world, from Third-Class to Sephiroth, the SOLDIER program never had more than two thousand individuals at a time. Many of them were city boys, being picked from the military academies at Junon and Midgar. Those who volunteered to enter the SOLDIER program more than often failed, and of those volunteers who managed to pass, only about 12% were from country towns like Nibelheim. They tended to be heroes in their neighborhoods.

If someone from Nibelheim had gotten into SOLDIER, even after moving away, it would be big news.

The man looked uncomfortable. Cloud wondered why.

“I… used to live here, yeah. Kind of. It was a long time ago, though. Now will you go back?”

“What’s your name? Tell me that and I’ll leave,” Cloud promised.

He could ask his mom with a name. If he had a name, there was no way she would hold back if she knew anything. And she had been thorough about checking out her family when she got the notice. She would know, right?

“Why are you asking me this? Nobody is going to remember me, I guarantee it,” the man said.

Well, he had been gone a long time if he thought small town memories died so easily. Mr. Frey and Mr. Haugendorf had been arguing over the size of a Marlboro they killed for the past sixty years.

“Maybe someone will,” Cloud said. “And, hey, I got to talk to a SOLDIER from my town. That’s not a bad thing. I’d like your name so I don’t forget.”

“I doubt you’d forget anyway,” the man said. He turned and resumed walking down the road.

Cloud tried not to let the bitter, familiar feeling of failure and disappointment swallow him whole.

( _But you couldn’t just ask him straight out if he was family could you baby wimp loser._ )

“Lightning.”

It was so soft Cloud almost did not catch it. Then his brain caught up with his ears and he smiled.

Lightning Strife.

Very awesome, if he was right.

 

* * *

 

 

So he did go home, because he was not a liar, whatever else those idiots Tifa hung out with said. It was getting close to his lunch time anyway.

His mother asked him where he had been to come home so torn up and filthy. He was in too good a mood to act ashamed that he went up the mountain trail. He told her everything, including the reason he felt compelled to follow after the mystery man. She was angry, then almost pitying, then intrigued when he told her the man’s words.

“So, is it possible?” Cloud asked.

“Perhaps,” Sky Strife answered, and Cloud’s heart leapt. It did not matter that he would probably never see the man again unless he came back the same way from Rocket Town. He might have a SOLDIER cousin. Or uncle. Relative. “I’ll dig out the papers after dinner tonight and we can look through them.”

Cloud had never hated his chores as much as he did then. Every dust bunny he had to sweep up, every crack in the fence that he had to fill in, seemed to be laughing at him. ‘Ha ha ha! You’ll never get us all finished!’ This was not the truth of course, but he was thirteen and impatient. When those two things are together, a summer day can seem like a lifetime.

Dinner finally rolled around at six p.m. and Cloud inhaled his mother’s cooking without tasting it. A shame, since she usually made very tasty fare. Still, it was not like he would never get another chance to eat it. And anyway, mysterious-maybe-relative! That beat stew and biscuits.

He helped her clear the table and then they opened the old chest that Sky kept their important papers in. Birth certificates, land deeds, death notifications, wills, diaries, the family tree – every bit of Strife family paperwork that remained for the past six generations. The possibility that the stranger was from the other half of his family was raised and then dismissed. The hair that had drawn Cloud in was strictly a Strife trait.

The older stuff got put back in almost immediately. There was no mention of the black-sheep moving away to start a brothel or anything interesting like that. Every member of the family was accounted for from their birth until their death. Only two had ever left Nibelheim and they, like Sky, had returned to stay when it came time to settle down. The same went with their children and their children, too. That just left his grandparents’ generation and his mother’s.

He had known, objectively, that he had once had a large family. It was something else to see his grandfather and his six grand-aunts and grand-uncles spread out on paper. Aunt Zephyr Strife was the eldest, then his own grandfather Cyclone, younger brother Gust, sister Sunny, brother Hale, brother Sleet and finally littlest sister Cloud, who he had been named after (a fact that his tormentors took every opportunity to remind him of).

Seven people in all and a whopping twenty-two children between them, with five more grandchildren besides himself. All dead and gone now, save himself and his mother and maybe the SOLDIER. He had not fully appreciated that until just then.

“Amazing, isn’t it? So many people, so many lives, and only us to show for it today,” Sky whispered sadly.

That brought Cloud even further down.

He had never known any of the people on the paper in front of him, but his mother had. They had been her father and mother, her aunts and uncles, her cousins and nephews and nieces. The people that had raised her, taught her to be who she was, and ultimately cast her out for it.

Cloud knew the story behind his birth, the version his mother told him and the version he put together from gossip and insults. Nibelheim had been bigger fourteen years ago than it was today. The mining industry was still big and no one had to leave for new jobs. People passed by all the time, either to try and settle down or just to stop by on their way. His father had been one of the former.

According to his mother, Virgil Eirhart was a kind, loving man who swept her off her feet and would have married her had that cave-in not cut things short. According to Mrs. Whitley at the grocery store as she retold the story to young Ms. Kaust (and Cloud was almost sure that she knew he had been listening in), Virgil Eirhart was a lying swindler who had taken his fool mother in for her family name and money, and was going to leave her at the alter once he learned that Cyclone was disinheriting his tramp of a daughter. Either way, with no home willing to take her in and no husband able to build her a new one, a newly pregnant Sky Strife had taken off for the city and found it to be less forgiving than she had hoped to a young woman with no connections. When the death notice came five months later, it was almost a relief.

The main house had been buried in the avalanche, along with everyone who had bothered to show up for Zephyr’s birthday, which _was_ everyone. As the sole remaining relative (and as Cyclone had been the only one to specifically write Sky out of his own will), Cloud’s mother had found herself with quite a bit of property and money. Most of it was lost to pay off the family’s various debts, but what was left was enough for her and a new baby to live off of. A good thing too, as most of the townspeople saw her even today as a woman who had ruined her good name and come back to live upon the graves of her more respectable family.

Sky had always told Cloud of the importance of family, but looking back, Cloud could not think of more than a few instances where Sky had ever offered him any stories. None of them had featured her father.

Suddenly, looking through the family papers did not appeal to him.

“Um, mom, if you want to stop, I can – “

Sky cut him off. “No, it’s all right. Really, I’ve been so depressed about all this for so long. It’s nice to have a happy reason to look at these things again. Now, what about my cousin Typhoon here?”

She was forcing the cheer into her voice, Cloud was sure. Still, there was interest in her eyes, so….

“Don’t think so. See here? He divorced his wife because she was barren.”

“Ah, right. That was a nasty time, I recall. He was always snapping at everyone and I don’t think we ever proved that it was Marian who was barren. Okay, cross him off. Now, what about cousin Thunder….”

 

* * *

 

 

It was almost midnight when they finally put everything back. Cloud figured they had narrowed it down to two possibilities. The first was his mother’s cousin Snow, who had married a girl in Nibelheim, gone off to Kalm and only returned on the day of his death. He had never mentioned a child, but then he had hardly ever written home and only when he needed to. Supposedly business had kept him busy, but Cloud thought he just enjoyed being on his own for once. The second was another cousin named Terran, who had gotten into a massive fight with his parents at the age of sixteen, left and never come back. No one had ever learned what happened to him. For a moment Cloud thought that maybe the man had been Terran and simply given a different name, but that could not be it. Terran would have been in his early forties by then and the man was too young looking to be older than Sky.

Both disappointed that he had not gotten a definite answer and elated that there was hope, Cloud crawled into bed wondering how he could send a letter to Kalm asking after his cousin by marriage and track down a cousin by blood no one had heard from in almost thirty years.

He dreamed of faceless people with bright yellow hair milling all around him, but no one ever answered when he spoke. His hands passed through them when he tried to make contact. Then someone tapped his shoulder and said, “Why are you asking such stupid questions?” Cloud turned around and woke up.

He stared. The light from his window was strange. Red. And his nose itched when he breathed. Come to think of it, so did his lungs.

…Was that screaming outside?

…Yes it was.

Only half convinced he was awake, Cloud sat up and looked out of his window.

 

* * *

 

 

He was still asleep, as it turned out.

Nibelheim was a bonfire, every building he could see spewing orange-red flames out of their windows and doors. The well at the center of town was blazing away merrily as well. The updraft was carrying the smoke up and away, little cinders and sparks following it to glow hellishly in the air towards their unknown destination.

He looked away.

Mrs. Whitely was standing in front of her store and home, screaming high pitched, incomprehensible words and reaching toward the doorway she dared not enter. Mr. Whitely and Jacob were nowhere to be seen, so Cloud had a pretty good idea of why she was screaming.

He looked away.

The schoolteacher, Mr. Einzbern, was dragging himself away from the schoolhouse. He had no clothes on, but Cloud could see something falling off of him and being left behind on the paving stone as he crawled down the walkway leading to the town square.

He looked away.

The Welch family dog was laying still in the front yard of the Welch house. It had collapsed away from the flames that stretched out of the window. Sparks flew from the house and rained down on the dog. After a few moments, bright flares begin to puff up from its lank fur.

He looked away.

Mayor Lockhart was pinned to his fence by a massive sword. He kept trying to push it out of himself, but he was not strong enough. Tifa was crying and yanking the blade along with him. It had no effect. After a few moments, Mayor Lockhart coughed up a massive amount of dark blood, staining the blade, his daughter and his nightshirt red. His arms fell down and Cloud could hear Tifa begin to scream.

So he was sleeping.

Because none of that was real.

Obvious, really. What a stupid nightmare.

Cloud lay back down and pulled the covers over his head to muffle the noise.

It would be better when he woke up.

 

* * *

 

 

“Cloud?”

His mother?

She was in his dream too?

That hardly ever happened. Still, if he was lucid, maybe he could skip the waking up part and just make this into a happy dream. Cloud pulled the blanket down.

**_CRASH!_ **

Mayor Lockhart’s body came in through the window. Glass showered over Cloud and gave him a dozen stinging cuts. Without the glass to block out the worst of it, sound and heat came through the window with a vengeance. Cloud was sweating immediately and the screaming was ten times worse with no filter.

“ _Oh, God!”_

But his mother’s was the worst of all.

Sky Strife was kneeling by Mayor Lockhart’s body, feeling frantically for a pulse at his neck even though Cloud could tell he was very dead. The gaping, bloody hole in his torso was a big hint. And it was not only Lockhart who was bloody. Cloud’s cuts were staining his nightclothes and blanket red in places. Carefully, Cloud raised his hands to his eyes and flexed them, feeling the pain of cut skin as he did.

( _Not a dream._ )

And it was only then that the important things came to his mind.

( _Nibelheim is burning people are dead I’m in danger mom’s in danger we need to pack the valuables and get out maybe the old mansion wait who threw mayor lockhart who THREW A MAN THROUGH MY WINDOW?!_ )

Tifa was screaming.

That seemed much more important than it had been a few seconds ago.

Cloud looked out of his window.

A man in black, a tall man with long silver hair, was holding the girl Cloud had a crush on since forever in one hand and the monstrous blade that had impaled Mayor Lockhart in the other. He was lining up the blade with her body. Cloud knew what would come next.

“No!” Cloud yelled. He lunged for the window. It did not matter that his mother was screaming behind him. She was safe (for the moment). Tifa was going to die. Tifa, the only kid in town he wanted to be friends with, even if she did not know he existed. Tifa, who he had risked his life for once before, back when he did not even know the value of his own life. He knew it now. He also knew that if he saw her die, he would remember it forever and hate himself for not stopping it.

He was halfway through the window, glass cutting every bit of skin it touched, when the man turned to face him. He could not see the face – the smoke and heat warped everything more than ten feet away into a blur – but he saw the eyes. The green, glowing Mako eyes.

The green eyes.

And the long black coat.

And the long silver sword.

 

* * *

 

 

( _…No._

_No._

_Why?_

_Makes no sense._

_Not real._

_Not true._

_IGNORE IT AND HELP HER!_ )

 

* * *

 

 

Impossibly, incredibly, the man dropped Tifa and came toward the sound of Cloud’s yell.

At this point, Cloud realized the flaw in his heroic plan.

( _Shit!_ )

The body went forward when the mind screamed backward and Cloud fell in a heap onto the front porch. In the house behind him, his mother was screaming his name, asking if he was all right.

And the man was coming closer.

The man – terrifyingly tall, terrifyingly strong, terrifyingly near, terrifying.

Sky Strife – why did Cloud jump out the window? Who killed Lockhart? What is happening to the town? Wait, who is the man outside?

Mayor Lockhart – Dead, bleeding red meat on the Strife rug made by Cloud’s great-grandmother.

Tifa – thirteen years old, in shock, in denial, insane from the madness of the night, curled up against the fence she had landed by.

Nibelheim – was not going to last the night.

Cloud - thirteen, in nightclothes, bleeding, scared, confused.

 

* * *

 

 

( _What did we do to deserve this?_

_Nothing we did deserves this._

_Why is he going to kill us?_ )

 

* * *

 

 

And here is the scene:

The man stops in front of Cloud, raises the sword.

Sky throws something at him through the same window he used to deliver Lockhart.

The man returns the favor with a blast of fire from his bracer.

Sky screams and roasts.

And Cloud –

The sword comes down.

\- Waits to die too.

( _…Someone help…._ )

 

* * *

 

 

_“BASTARD!”_

The air turned shockingly cold in a single moment as spears of ice, longer than Cloud was tall, rained down where the man was standing just a second ago.

Something landed in front of Cloud with a flash of light and a thump heavy enough to crater the ground. His eyes stinging, Cloud looked through the smoke and the heat. The air was alive and all his hair was standing on end. He had felt like that before, when the summer nights turned dark and the sky rumbled. It was stupid joke, even in his head, but with Hell having come to Nibelheim, Cloud does not really care when he stares at his savior who fell down from the mountaintop and thinks that lightning has struck.


	2. Chapter 2

Lightning _moved_.

He had to have moved, because he was not in front of Cloud anymore. Neither was Sephi… the man. Instead, there was the screeching sound of metal striking metal from above, the right, the left, behind the fountain, on the roof, _everywhere at once_ and then something was sent hurtling through Mr. Black’s house with enough force to knock down the front wall.

Lightning was in front of him again. Cloud was pulled to his feet and Lightning’s hands were knocking the glass out of his hair, Lightning’s voice asking over and over again, “Are you all right?! Are you all right?!”

Cloud must have stammered out something resembling _my mother_ because Lightning left and smashed his way through Cloud’s front window, the same one that Lockhart had come through only a minute before. Cloud turned to watch him. The inside of his house was blackened, but only a few things had actually caught on fire as a result of the man’s spell. His curtains, for one. The rug. His mother’s night gown.

She was still burning when Lightning carried her back out. He gently set her on the porch and patted the flames out with his hands. Lightning was covered in dark blood and soot. Sky was making soft moaning sounds and she kept twitching. Cloud stared down at the wreckage of melted flesh that had been his mother. Her face was a barely recognizable smear, warped by the fire into something from a horror tale.

“Kid!”

That was his mother.

She was going to die.

“Kid!”

Even if she lived, would she want to?

_“Kid!”_

Something touched him and Cloud threw himself backwards. It was only Lightning, trying to get his attention. The blue Mako eyes were like headlights and Cloud could not look away.

“Listen, that man isn’t down yet. You need to take your mother and hide somewhere, okay? I’ll come and get you later.”

There was so much wrong with that. Cloud wanted to scream, cry, laugh: _my mother isn’t going to live through tonight my home is destroyed my whole town is dead why is this happening what made Shinra hate us_. Instead, he nodded and pointed up the mountainside, where the fire had not yet spread.

Madman, dragon, avalanche; it was all the same. Do not think. Survive.

Something in Lightning relaxed and the man nodded. “Okay, I’ll go that way afterwards. Use these,” and he gently pressed two small vials into Cloud’s limp hand. “They’re called Elixirs. They can help your mom a bit, fix some of the damage, _but not all of it_. Use them to get her – “

Something behind Cloud exploded and Lightning shifted his gaze away. The look on his face changed, going from focus to _absolute rage_ in less than a second. Without another word to Cloud, Lightning grabbed his massive sword off of the deck and launched himself back towards the town square. Cloud turned around and saw –

A black coat and silver hair that the fire did not touch; a long sword that had slaughtered so many and yet still shone brightly; a serene, confident smile of madness as he stepped through the fire of the Black house.

He walked through the fire like it was nothing to him.

Something in Cloud _snapped_ and he was abruptly pouring the Elixir over his mother’s torso without any memory of opening it.

( _Gotta run gotta hide gotta run gotta hide._ )

The liquid splashed over charred skin and Cloud watched, numb to amazement, as it began to regrow. All over his mother’s body new flesh began to peek through the dead flesh, bursting from the seams like an over packed bag. Before it had even finished, Cloud had uncorked the second vial and poured it on. Throwing the now useless container aside, Cloud stood up and stepped over his mother to reach the window. His blanket was still there, just beyond the hole that Lockhart had made and Lightning enlarged. He could see the boot prints where Lightning had walked over it. Ignoring the burning curtains to his sides, Cloud reached in and grabbed his comforter off the bed. Glass rained down with little tinkling sounds.

Walking back to his mother’s side, Cloud draped the blanket over the deck. Then, carefully, he pushed and pulled his mother until she lay down on it. He held his breath and tried not to think about how strangely her flesh moved under his hands. When Sky Strife lay on the makeshift stretcher, Cloud grabbed two corners and started pulling.

It was painfully, terrifyingly slow getting her down from their deck and across the town square. Cloud could hear the sound of fighting through the roar of the fire and once caught a glimpse of Lightning when he dashed from one house to another ahead of the man in black. Twice, massive gouts of flame that could not have come from any natural fire came at him and were countered by other spells. Each time that happened, Cloud moved a little faster, ignoring the pain in his bare feet. Screaming elsewhere told him he was not the only being targeted.

He was halfway to the mountain trail when someone began pulling with him. He did not notice until they ripped the blanket corner straight out of his hand. Turning, Cloud saw Tifa Lockhart holding the other half of his mother’s carrier.

“He said I had to follow you,” Tifa whispered.

Cloud did not need her to explain who ‘he’ was.

They continued up the path, hacking and coughing when the wind blew the smoke in their direction. They never once stopped. Somehow they both knew they would not be able to start again. It was either get away or die.

Tifa was not the only one to join him. Three times more they were joined by people, blackened with soot and in their night clothes, who ran up the trail after them. The teenage son of the town repairman, Justin Koenig; a newly married couple, Mr. Nicholas and Mrs. Karen Elliot; the whole Danvers family. The last had, apparently, been awakened by Lightning crashing full body through their dining room wall. He had pointed them towards the mountains before rushing back out through the same hole. Justin he had pulled from a burning house. The Elliots had woken up on their own and simply hightailed it out of Nibelheim after pulling on their shoes and coats. Cloud envied them for their foresight.

Nicholas had picked Sky up into his arms, blanket and all, rather than force anyone to drag her along behind them. Cloud had mumbled a tired thank you, feeling his arms cry with relief. His mother was not a large woman by any means, but dead weight was dead weight, particularly when going uphill. Tifa immediately claimed his vacant left hand. Cloud wondered if she even knew what she was doing.

“Where are we going?” Justin finally asked.

“Away,” Cloud answered. “He said he’d come and find me later. Find us later. He has to stop that guy first, then he’ll come and find us.”

( _He has to stop him or we’ll just be chased and hunted down like rabbits please don’t let that man win please_ )

“But _where_?” Justin pressed, and Cloud suddenly, irrationally, hated Justin’s guts for it. “Where are we going to stay? There are monsters in these mountains and I didn’t bring dad’s rifle.”

“There’s always the mansion,” Karen said. “It hasn’t been demolished or anything, right? We could stay there and figure out what to do later.”

No one agreed. No one disagreed. Nicholas was huffing, already tired from carrying Sky. Tifa was walking in a daze, the expression on her face almost sleepy if not for the blasted look in her eyes. She would not relinquish the death grip she had on Cloud’s hand. Justin was silent, his questions all dried up. George Danvers, the Danvers patriarch, ignored everything else but his wife, gently coaxing her along with him. His son Alan was carrying little Missy Danvers, while Alan’s wife Josephine led Timmy Danvers along by the hand. Cloud, still in the lead, let all thoughts beyond ‘ _get away from the fire_ ’ leave his mind.

Direction could wait. Shelter could wait. Rest could wait.

Do not think.

Survive.

 

* * *

 

 

The Shinra mansion loomed up in front of them like a colossus.

It was every bit the wreck people had called it. Several of the windows were smashed. Weeds had overgrown the lawn and invaded the porch. The fence was rusted and buckling in places. The paint was peeling off of it in great strips. Shingles were missing from the roof. Lightning flashed in the background.

That last one was just due to the oncoming storm, but it was still appropriate.

George went in first, kicking the old gate down with his bare feet. It collapsed with a shriek of rushed metal.

“Come on,” he said.

They followed, one by one. Cloud and Tufa hung by Nicholas, Cloud focused on the wheezing gasps of the bundle Nicholas carried. The wind picked up again and threw a smattering of dead leaves at the tired party. They were ignored. The old porch groaned and squealed under foot when so many people stood on top of it. The door, huge and solid, barred their way only for a moment. Justin looked beneath the mat and pulled out an ancient looking key.

“Everybody does it,” he muttered by way of explanation.

The lock was stiff, but enough force in the wrist cause the tumblers to give way. The lock opened with an audible snapping sound and there was not a doubt in Cloud’s mind that they had broken something. Still, the door opened fine, so it was no trouble for them.

The interior was no better than the exterior. Debris that had flown in through the shattered windows coated the floor. Dust lay heavy on everything. There was no sign that anyone had lived there for decades.

They ignored the stairs and went into a little room on the right. There was a sheet covered couch against the wall and Nicholas lay Cloud’s mother down onto it. She still had not woken up. Cloud looked at her body, with new scarred flesh webbed around old blackened meat, and found that he almost wished she never did.

Sky had never been a woman with much. The life of plenty ended abruptly with her pregnancy and exile. Growing up, Cloud could only remember his mother taking pride in him. Not her name or home or anything else. But she had always tried to look her best, even if most of the townspeople would never give her the time of day. She had loved her hair and always rubbed cream into her hands in a futile attempt to keep them soft. Her body was something she had enjoyed, even if she had no one to enjoy it with. And now it was nauseating to look at.

She would be horrified, Cloud knew.

“Did anyone else hear that?!”

Josephine’s sudden question startled everyone and Cloud snapped his head around to stare at her.

Suddenly nervous beneath the stares of so many people, Josephine stuttered. “I-I mean, I th-thought I heard something. Just a second ago.”

The man had come to kill them, Cloud realized. Lightning had lost or the man had gotten away from Lightning, but the result was the same. The man was here and they would die too.

Without thinking, he wrapped his small fingers around a floorboard that jutted up from its brethren. He pulled as hard as he could and yanked it up a few more inches.

“What are you doing?” Justin asked.

Tifa knew. She dropped his hand and added her own muscle to help him. The floorboard groaned and slowly, ever so slowly, was pried loose. Rusty nails jutted out from both ends and Cloud felt splinters digging into both of his hands. It did not matter. Tifa evidently agreed with him, as she immediately began pulling up another one.

“Weapons,” Cloud growled at the people staring slack-jawed at his apparent insanity. Really, what else would they use? The only other bit of furniture in the room was an end table that looked far too solid to easily break apart.

“Oh, nice idea,” Karen said. She walked over to help Tifa wrestle with her board and, getting the idea, the men began tearing up their own.

It was slow, messy work. Cloud’s board had come up easiest. The others had to be hauled up from the floor at the expense of much cursing and yanking. In the end, they only got four: Cloud’s, one for Nicholas, one for Justin and one for George Danvers. After a bit of thought, Justin gave his to Alan, who was much bigger across the shoulders. Cloud was fine with that, so long as no one tried to take his away.

But even though it had to have taken a whole ten minutes to get the floorboards up, no silver haired man came to interrupt them. Cloud could have believed Josephine to have been mistaken, were it not for the instincts in his mind screaming that something was wrong.

( _Everything is wrong tonight._ )

“Stay here,” George said. “Nicholas, Alan and I will have a look around.”

‘ _Be careful_ ’ someone whispered, but Cloud was not listening. Less people meant less protection meant he was protecting his mother with only a floorboard and whatever help a teenage boy and two women could give. Old Mrs. Danvers was sitting against the wall with a hand over her face, weeping softly; Missy was asleep or unconscious; Timmy was next to his grandmother, shaking uncontrollably and muttering ‘not real’ to himself over and over again.

He could not rely on any of them. Had to do it himself if –

Wood snapped and Cloud bit back a curse before he saw the source.

Tifa Lockhart held up the half a floorboard she had broken loose and switched her grip to put the nail end up and out. The vacant look was gone from her eyes. Cloud was not sure if the burning _something_ that had replaced them was any better. She saw him staring at her and gave him a quick nod.

…Okay, maybe not entirely on his own.

Behind him, his mother continued to wheeze in and out. Each shuddering gasp was proof that she still lived. Maybe she would want to die when she saw what had been done to her. Maybe she would not. Either way, it was Cloud’s job to make sure she stuck around long enough to make that decision.

He settled against the couch, splintery weapon in hand, and waited for something to happen.

 

* * *

  

It was a long time before the men came back.

Cloud could hear them thumping around the old house, opening doors and walking down the hallways. Twice, there had been a sudden bout of yelling and crashing that had his heart in his throat. But both times, they died down and his grip on the floorboard loosened. Finally, the three explorers crept back in through the door and shut it firmly behind them. All three of them were bleeding somewhere. Nicholas seized the end table and jammed it in front of the door before lowering himself to the floor.

“Well, we aren’t alone here after all,” Alan said softly. “It isn’t that maniac, though. Just a bunch of monsters that infested the place.”

Cloud felt no relief. Monsters could kill just as easily as people and they had no decent weapons.

“Did they follow you?” Karen asked worriedly.

“No. We only got attacked twice and beat them off both times. There wasn’t anything behind us when we came back, so I think we’re okay here,” Alan replied.

“Well, there’s that at least,” Karen said and that ended conversation for quite a while.

 

* * *

  

Outside, Nibelheim burned.

They could see the glow from the one window in the room. It faced out towards the path that led to town and the cherry-red light was visible even from there. The smoke smell was still with them, though it was impossible to tell if that came from their own bodies or the wind. The scent of charred flesh and blood came with it. Sometimes a scream drifted up to the house, but it could just as easily have been a bird.

No one stayed at the window for very long.

Karen and Josephine helped Cloud tear the sheet up for bandages. Most of them went to his mother and were immediately soaked through when they came into contact with her skin.

( _What was left of her skin_.)

The rest was spread out among themselves to staunch blood flow from scrapes and cuts and gashes. Tifa used hers to wrap up her feet and, after wiping his face clean as best as he could, Cloud did the same. He wanted to be able to run and having torn up feet made that harder. The only ones who had come out of the ordeal more or less unharmed were the Elliots and the Danvers children. All the rest had been knocked about and, in Cloud, Tifa, and Justin’s case, breathed in a great deal of smoke. Those three spent every other breath breaking into coughing fits for the first two hours. Everyone in the room soon became used to the sound of hacking.

But, again, Sky was the worst.

Her dull, wheezing rattle was the only sign that she still lived. Sometimes it would cut out for a moment or two longer than normal and Cloud would feel his heart start to race, but then it would begin again like a motor kicking over.

Things did not get better with the arrival of the summer storm. The sound of rain falling against the roof made Cloud sleepy, made him lose focus. Twice, he nearly gave in to his exhaustion and nodded off. Twice, Tifa noticed and pinched him. The adults were against it at first, telling her that she should let him sleep. Cloud silenced them.

“I want to stay awake,” Cloud informed them in no uncertain terms. “If I die, I want to hurt that man before I do.”

That shut them up.

 

* * *

 

 

It was a kind of slow madness.

_Mother will die._

_Mother will live._

_Mother will want to die._

_Mother must want to live._

_I need to kill that man._

_That man will kill me._

_I want to kill that man._

_That is not an evil thing._

_Yes, it is an evil thing._

_He is an evil thing._

_He is your hero._

_He is a monster._

_We are going to die here._

_We need to get out and keep moving._

_Where could we go?_

_Anywhere._

_Never make it out of the mountains._

_Have to try._

_Need to be stronger._

_Should have fought him._

_Where is Lightning?_

 

* * *

 

Four and a half hours after limping through the mansion door, a filthy, drenched, exhausted Lightning finally caught up with the small group of survivors huddled in the mansion.

Of course by then both Sky Strife and Old Mrs. Danvers had been dead for over one hour.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter, and in record time too. Well, by my standards.
> 
> For those of you who noticed the ages of Cloud and Tifa, congratulations. Yes, Nibelheim has been torched a bit earlier than expected. BUT HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?! 
> 
> …Well, someone lit it on fire. Duh. 
> 
> But as to how and why said person did such a thing? You’ll have to stick around for the long haul.


	3. Chapter 3

They buried Sky and Old Mrs. Danvers in the town cemetery in the morning. Each of the families had their own plot and they dug the graves on their own. Old Mr. Danvers and Alan Danvers took turns using the shovel, each taking over when the other was tired.

As for Cloud, he did his own digging at first. Breaking through Nibelheim’s rocky topsoil took the better part of half an hour. When he had finally cleared away five inches of dirt in a five and a half foot rough rectangle, he had to stop to rest. Tifa pulled the shovel from his hand and kept at it. She managed to deepen the grave by a few more inches, but then she too dropped down to rest. Her hands, like Cloud’s, were bleeding in places. Lightning finished the job.

Cloud had not had a chance to look in a mirror, but Lightning looked how Cloud felt. And he probably felt how Cloud looked. As he deepened the grave (and there was none of the trouble that Cloud or Tifa had experienced. The shovel blade sank into the earth like a knife through butter and left just as easily), he never once looked at Sky’s coffin. He simply stared at the hole in the ground that she was going to be lowered into before sundown. He did not cry, but there was a hollow look on his face that spoke of bone-deep grief. Cloud could not understand why. It could not have just been for Sky. Whether or not Lightning really was related to the Strifes ( _and Cloud found that he flat out did not care anymore_ ), he had never spoken a word to her. He did not know her. How could he be mourning for her? It was Nibelheim he had to be crying for. Nibelheim, all the people he had failed to save, and all the people he had failed to avenge.

Because the man had escaped.

Cloud had asked the moment Lightning came into their little hiding room in the mansion. Had asked if the man was dead. If his mother could die avenged.

“No,” Lightning had said. “He got away.”

He had sounded so empty when he said it. Like it was nothing more important than forgetting something from the grocery list. But his face….

Lightning had stayed in the room long enough to heal the survivors. His materia left no trace of the night’s horrors on their bodies. After the spells, Cloud had even stopped coughing from the smoke damage. Then he had told them that they could bury the women in the morning and that they should stay in the room a little while longer. That he had to leave them for a bit to get help.

“You’re leaving us?!” Justin had yelled. Just walking down the mountain would take even a SOLDIER a whole day. “We’ll get eaten up here!”

Lightning had shook his head. “No, not for long. Just an hour or two.”

He had left (and Cloud tried to follow him, did not want to stay with the burned thing wrapped in a sheet, but Lightning had told him flat out “Stay here. _Stay_. There are worse monsters where I’m going.”) and come back as promised only a little more than an hour later. He was dragging a coffin behind him and so was the man who he had found. At least, Cloud was fairly sure it was a man. A person.

Vincent Valentine moved oddly. He would stand perfectly still and then lurch into motion like someone had pushed him. The strange thing was that he never bumped into anything, even though he always seemed to be one moment from falling flat on his face. He misjudged distances, his own speed, his own strength, _everything_ , and yet nothing bad had yet come of it.

“He’s still shaking the cobwebs off,” Lightning had said when he caught Cloud staring. “Give him a few days and he’ll be the smoothest thing you’ve ever seen.”

Looking at Vincent as he was, Cloud doubted it. But the man was strong, without a doubt. He had carried the heavy coffin along as easily as Lightning had carried the other. Cloud looked at the gangly man’s glowing eyes and knew where that strength came from. But what about the arm? What about the coffins they had brought up with them? Why had Vincent been living in the basement? _How_ had Vincent been living in the basement?

“I’ll explain later,” Lightning had said.

So they had waited in the next room, away from the dead bodies. They had let Lightning and Vincent take care of the few monsters that were attracted to the noise. When the sun rose and the rain stopped, they had let Lightning and Vincent escort them back to the ruins of Nibelheim, still burning in places. And now Cloud let Lightning finish digging the grave for his mother that he had been too weak to complete himself.

( _Pathetic._ )

 

* * *

 

 

Before ten o’clock had come, the dirt was being piled back into the hole on top of the coffin.

Cloud and Tifa stood by while Lightning dumped pile after pile of dirt back into the ground. Cloud had chosen a spot beneath an old oak tree and the shade kept the worst of the sun away. It also made it harder to see the words he had carved into the bark with a knife scavenged from the mansion’s kitchen.

**Sky Strife**

**Beloved Mother**

**January 4, 1968 – June 10, 0000**

( _He could pretend it was someone else in that coffin._ )

The rest of his family was buried a ways off to the left. Lightning had quietly asked him earlier if he was sure he wanted Sky to be buried apart from them. Cloud had known the answer. However nice they might have been to Sky growing up ( _and he was not too sure about that, either_ ), his family had thrown her out for falling in love with his father, for getting pregnant with him. That was not the sort of thing Cloud could forgive. If they wanted her away from them forever, it was damn well going to be _forever_. Alive or dead, he did not want his mother to put up with anyone’s nagging.

Nearby, he could hear the sounds of digging over by the Danvers plot. As near as anyone could tell without a doctor or a coroner nearby, Old Mrs. Danvers had just died of shock. She had never had a strong heart and the events of the night must have been too much for her. The old woman had survived long enough to reach safety and cry herself to sleep only to never wake up, which made it worse somehow. She had been awake before she had died. She could have said goodbye, had she realized what was happening to her.

“Done.”

Cloud and Tifa both jolted violently. That was the first word Lightning had spoken since he began his grim task. Now even filthier than the night before, he leaned the shovel against the tree and stepped back from the grave. It rose above the ground in a small mound, the darker loosened soil showing against the paler packed earth.

It looked wrong.

“Are either of you going to say something?” Lightning asked softly.

“Why? She can’t hear me now,” Cloud said. “We still need to dig a grave for Tifa’s dad, too. Better to not waste time.”

( _Better to not think about it._ )

Lightning looked at him. “You’d be surprised about what the dead can hear,” Lightning said. “And if you… I never got the chance, when my mom died, I mean. I didn’t get to say goodbye. You do, so you should. It… might help, later.”

“I said no. Give me the shovel. You can go grab another coffin,” Cloud responded. When Lightning hesitated, Cloud stormed up to him and snatched the shovel out of his hands. Tifa followed not long after and they wandered back towards Nibelheim together. Lightning watched them go for a moment and then turned back to road that led up to the mansion.   


He still had one more thing to do.

 

* * *

 

 

Mayor Lockhart had been laying in Cloud’s bedroom when Cloud last saw him. The house was a shattered wreck, having taken even more damage after Cloud left, but it had not burned down. Most of the furniture inside had been smashed to pieces, but his sheets were still in one piece. Cloud and Tifa stripped them off the wreck of a mattress and rolled her father’s body on top of the fabric. They had him bundled up shortly and between the two of them managed to drag him out of the house and to the cemetery.

( _If Cloud saw tears streaming down Tifa’s face or heard her breathing break apart into sobs he said nothing. She had said nothing about his mother. He would return the favor._ )

Lightning was gone when they arrived at the spot Tifa’s mother had been buried years earlier. Cloud offered the shovel to her, but she shook her head. While Cloud began the backbreaking task of digging into mountainous soil, Tifa collapsed beside her father’s shrouded corpse and cried softly. Cloud did not stop in his task. The abrasions on his hands opened up again and soon the handle was getting dark with his blood. Cloud ignored it. There were worse things.

He was maybe a foot down when Tifa tapped him on the shoulder and took the shovel away from him. Cloud had gone numb by that point, deaf to the screaming of his body. He stumbled out of the hole and fell down onto the ground. Behind him, Tifa stopped and turned to reach out to him. Cloud waved her off and crawled to the nearest rock to lean against it. Tifa began deepening the grave and Cloud took a moment to look around.

The cemetery was located higher up from Nibelheim. Looking down the trail offered a decent view of the town. Rather, what was left of the town. Fully three quarters of Nibelheim were turned to blackened ruins. Only the area around the mansion trail was somewhat untouched, Cloud’s house and that of the Elliot’s among them. The water tower had collapsed when its legs burned and the spill still glimmered on the south edge of the square, a miniature pond that would soon disappear. A few small fires still flared within some wreckage that had not yet burned out. And there were bodies everywhere, littering the yards and porches and the square. Some were charred, others in pieces, some whole and looking perfect but for the dark red stain that covered the ground around them.

Nibelheim.

It had been his home his entire life, but he looked at it and felt nothing. The town was dead, yes, but it gave him no grief. Everything had been sucked out of him and all that was left was cold. That would probably change later, but for the moment Cloud was hollow. All he could –

Something moved below.

Cloud straightened up, his hand reaching for a rock without permission. Had the man come back?

But no. The flicker came into focus as a blur of red, not silver. Vincent. The man had been sent down to scavenge what he could from the stores and homes below. He had taken the order without complaint and vanished not a moment after reaching the town entrance. Cloud had seen neither hide nor hair of him until just then.

The Danvers family was still at their work. Cloud could hear Old Man Danvers instructing his son and daughter-in-law to help him lower Old Mrs. Danvers’ coffin into the ground. Little Missy was crying loudly, begging them to bring Grandma out of the box.

And there was Lightning, coming back to the cemetery with another coffin on his shoulders.

Lightning….

Cloud did not know what to make of him. Why had he come back to Nibelheim? Hours had passed between Lightning leaving him in the mountains and Lightning intervening to save Cloud’s life. Moving quickly, Lightning might have been able to leave the mountains and be on the road to Rocket Town by then. But for some reason, he had turned around. Why?

( _Less questions, more digging. Isn’t Tifa tired by now?_ )

He turned to look at her. No, Tifa was not going to last much longer. She was stabbing the shovel head against the earth, but had lost the strength to penetrate the ground. Sighing, Cloud got back up and walked over to take the shovel from her.

“I’ll finish. Rest,” he said.

Tifa shook her head and stubbornly kept hitting the dirt. Cloud frowned and reached….

…Wait. Tifa had not said anything. She had just shaken her head. And the time before, she had done the same thing when they arrived at her family’s plot. When was the last time she had spoken? …The night before. ‘He said I had to follow you,’ or something like that. Nothing since.

“Tifa, can you say something?” Cloud asked.

“Don’ feel like talkin’,” she mumbled.

Okay, so the smoke had not damaged her throat, at least.

“Still digging?” Lightning asked as he arrived. The coffin shook the ground slightly as he set it down. “Are you sure you don’t want me helping?”

“ _Yes_!” Cloud snapped. “You can put it in the grave, but stop bothering us about the rest!”

Lightning looked at him, but it was not angry. He just looked sad again. With a quiet assent, Lightning left the coffin with them and walked away towards Sky’s grave. Glaring at him ( _but it was not his fault. Things would be easier if he helped_ ), Cloud turned away when Lightning was out of sight and went to work on the coffin. The clasps holding it shut had been broken, probably by Lightning, and the hinges gave no more protest than a squeal when he pulled the lid up. The purple velvet inside was dusty, but there was no damage to the lining.

No, wait. There was a dark smudge on the velvet beneath the dust. It extended from top to bottom and nearly looked like a….

…Oh.

… _Oh._

( _Tifa could never look at this_.)

( _And what exactly had Lightning done with the… remains?_ )

Cloud left the coffin and returned to Mayor Lockhart’s side. He grabbed the sheets and started pulling, dragging the body to the coffin. Behind him, the sounds of digging stopped.

“I’ve got it,” Cloud said.

The sounds resumed.

He aligned the body with the coffin and took a deep breath before grabbing the upper half. It took a great deal of heaving and grunting, but he eventually got the body onto the edge of the container and then rolled it over. Tugging it into a proper position took just as much effort. Finally, he slammed the lid shut and stepped away. He doubted Tifa was going to want to look at her father again.

“Le…. Let me know… when you get tired. Okay?”

“Got it,” Tifa responded quietly.

Cloud left her to the bitter task.

 

* * *

  

They could dig the grave even if it took a long time and he could get the body in the coffin even if it took a lot of effort, but to drop the coffin into the grave, they needed Lightning. The older man heaved the whole thing up, wood and body both, and gently lowered it into the ground. Then Tifa and Cloud took turns pushing the dirt back into the hole until it rose into a dark mound.

The grave marker was nothing beautiful. Just a large piece of wood dragged up from the town ruins. It took the last of Tifa’s energy to carve her father’s name, the dates and an epitaph before she simply collapsed. Lightning was the one who placed it at the head of the grave and it was Lightning who carried Tifa down to the town center where the rest of the survivors were meeting up as the day ended. Cloud limped along quietly behind him.

They were a small and ragged bunch. Missy Danvers had cried herself to sleep and was resting in her father’s arms. Old Mr. Danvers was stone faced and silent. Mrs. Danvers was clutching a bag full of scavenged supplies, as was Timmy. The Elliots were much the same way, grim and dirty. They each held their own, smaller bags of food and medicine. Only Justin had managed to find a weapon. Someone’s hunting rifle was strapped to his back and a belt full of bullets was wrapped around his hips. Between the rifle and the backpack, it must have been heavy, but he said nothing.

Vincent stood apart from them, half hidden in the shadow of a support beam that had survived the night. Cloud could make out a pistol on his hip, but aside from that Vincent seemed to have nothing for himself.

Looking at them all, Cloud wondered if they should even be doing what they were. Everyone was exhausted and hurting, yet Lightning and Vincent wanted to leave as soon as possible. It would be better to stay, wouldn’t it? They could send someone down to the nearest outpost and call for help. Why not rest for a night?

“Do you need anything?”

Cloud started in shock. It was Lightning, coming back toward him. Tifa was still resting in his arms.

“From your house, I mean. Do you need anything? Medicine, a coat, a weapon, something of your family?”

Cloud forced himself to think. But still, the question remained. “Why do we have to leave? Everyone’s ready to collapse and you want us to spend three or four days hiking down a mountain.”

Lightning frowned and looked over the little group. “Ordinarily, I’d agree with you. But that man….”

Cloud stilled.

“I don’t know when he’ll be back. I know he’ll come back sooner or later – he’s a complete monster and hates leaving a job unfinished besides – and I was barely able to protect even these people last night. The best I could do was get them out of the line of fire. If Vincent were in better condition I’d leave you with him, but I don’t know that we have that much time. If I leave you all here now and he comes back, you’ll die. That simple. If we try to go down the mountain together, Vincent and I can keep you safe from the monsters and that man won’t be able to find us as easily. Not much of a choice, but there you go.”

“Why can’t Vincent go himself?” Cloud asked.

“Two reasons. One, I’m not sure he could find the way without getting lost at least a few times. Two, he can’t be seen by any Shinra personnel if there’s the slightest chance they’ll pass his description up the chain of command.”

“He’s a _criminal_?”

Lightning scowled softly. “No. He’s done some bad things, but he never enjoyed them. And he…. Look, he _does not_ deserve what they’d do to him, okay? No one would deserve it. Until he can dye his hair, hide that damn claw and a few other things, he can’t be seen.”

Cloud turned back to look at Vincent. The man had said nothing to him at the mansion, nothing was they went down the path to Nibelheim; he had said nothing at all to anyone, not even Lightning. Come to think of it, how did they know each other? And was Vincent why Lightning had come to Nibelheim?

…Why had that man come to Nibelheim?

“Lightning?”

The older man looked down at Cloud curiously.

Cloud stared blankly up at him.

“Was that man after you?”

….

….

….

“…I need to get everyone moving,” Lightning said quietly. “Go grab anything you need from your house and meet up with us soon.”

Lightning moved away, Tifa still cradled in his arms. Cloud had a brief, insane urge to rip her away from him. It was almost as strong as the urge to pull the kitchen knife out of his pocket, stab it into Lightning’s gut and twist it until answers were given. Both actions would have been doomed to failure. Cloud went to his house.

 

* * *

 

 

His heavy coat.

( _Even summer nights in Nibelheim got terribly cold and that was when he slept inside._ )

A biscuit tin packed with all the traveler friendly food he could dig up.

( _Mostly his mother’s smoked jerky and rosemary hard tack. She had said they would need more than last year because he was getting bigger._ )

His better pair of boots.

( _So much walking yet to do._ )

A canteen of water.

( _Because that would kill him before loss of food._ )

His father’s heavy knife, the one precious thing from Virgil that Sky had saved besides the hair clip he had given her.

( _He was going to need it, but only for one purpose_.)

The aforementioned hair clip, three small pearls acting as stars beside a moon pressed into the silver of the ornament.

( _What was he going to do with this? There were no more Strife woman to give it to._ )

A sleeping bag from the attic.

( _The ground would suck his warmth away._ )

The gil his mother always kept on hand, the paperwork for her savings account, and his own birth certificate.

( _He’d leave a name when he died._ )

There was nothing else.

 

* * *

  

“All right. Is everyone ready?”

A stupid question. They were all half dead on their feet. But everyone nodded.

“It’ll take three days, maybe four, to get down to the base of the mountain. If we’re lucky, we can borrow a car from the outpost on the way down. If not, we just walk. If _any of you_ feel ready to collapse, let me or Vincent know. We can stop for a bit or carry you. Don’t be embarrassed about it.

“If anyone wants to stay here and wait for the authorities, that’s your choice. I very much do not recommend it. This is the only settlement for miles and that madman will likely be coming back here for supplies if nothing else. Better to be far away when he does.

“If anything happens, leave it to either Vincent or myself. We are used to fighting monsters; you aren’t. Don’t try to be a hero, because it will probably kill you or someone else. Any questions?”

“You ever done escort work before?” Old Mr. Danvers asked bluntly.

Lightning smiled bitterly. There was something old and sad in his answer. “Once. A girl needed me to walk her home through the slums. For what it’s worth, she didn’t have a scratch on her when she got back to her mom. Anything else?”

“That man…” Karen said, shivering slightly. “That man in the black coat. Was that… was he really Sephiroth?”

Everyone stared at Lightning. If being under close scrutiny bothered him, he gave no sign of it.

“…I don’t know,” Lightning finally said. “That was not the Sephiroth I remember and I doubt the world’s leading SOLDIER could go AWOL long enough to get up to the Nibel Mountains without me having heard about it on the way. Could be Sephiroth off his medicine; could be an insane copycat pumped full of mako. I don’t know.”

( _He lied he lied he lied he lied and Cloud would get the truth out of him even if it killed him_ )

“Anything else? Did we get everything we needed? …All right, let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

 

They only made it three miles out of town before stopping to rest for an hour. Lightning and Vincent were chafing to move faster, Cloud could see that clearly, but they did not protest. All they said was to avoid any fires and try to stay quiet. There was no reason to draw monsters in any more than they could avoid.

Cloud hunkered down next to Tifa and Mrs. Danvers, using a large slab of rock jutting from the ground as a windbreak. Missy was curled up on her mother’s other side, dead to the world still. Cloud rather envied her. Despite all that had occurred, he was still wide awake. Sleep held no allure for him and his mind kept turning the facts around and around.

Lightning came to town.

Not-Sephiroth came to town.

Town burned.

Lightning returned.

Hid in mansion.

Lightning came back.

Vincent found.

Mother buried.

Town abandoned.

…Why didn’t he feel anything?

“Look,” Tifa whispered. Cloud glanced at her face and followed her upturned gaze.

High above them, from the other end of the path where they had come down from Nibelheim, the sky was beginning to glow faintly orange. Cloud, for one moment, thought it was the sun. His mind kicked in after a moment, telling him it was too early and in the wrong direction. And then he saw the smoke.

( _It would not be until later that he realized neither Vincent nor Lightning looked particularly worried or even surprised by the blaze behind them._ )

( _And in the depths of Nibelheim, the fires that had begun in the far below lab continued to rise and consume the mansion._ )

 


	4. Chapter 4

The progress was pitifully slow the first day, and only slightly better the second. The reason was primarily Missy, who had to be carried every so often, though Old Man Danvers was always lagging slightly as well. Lightning never complained, though. Cloud thought he understood why. Right then, all of the people in the group were keeping their suffering inside, but the first person to say anything about it would open up a dam of grief and rage. That was something that had to wait until they were safe.

Every now and then, monsters came for the group of ragged looking humans in search of an easy meal. They never came close, though. Vincent had indeed smoothed out over the course of the two days they walked. Every time he fired his gun, something died. Lightning had never needed to raise his sword. Without knowing how much ammunition Vincent had with him, Cloud could only wonder how long until that changed.

And there was never any sign of the man in black.

 

* * *

 

 

They reached the outpost at the end of the second day. By law, the only people who should have had access to the outpost were the two employees hired to maintain it. In practice, it was different. It was technically property of the Shinra Company, but they only used it to store a pair of heavy all-terrain jeeps that were kept for use by any Shinra personnel who had to travel deep into the mountains. The majority of its use was by the people of Nibelheim as they went up and down the mountain road. It made for a safe place to sleep, had a telephone to communicate with the village or elsewhere, and there was always a stock of food, resupplied monthly, for anyone who was in need of a meal.

Cloud did not know the two men in charge, but he had heard of them from others. David and Noels, both Nibelheim boys who had gone to join the company when it was younger and returned later in life to hover around the outskirts of town. Neither of them had ever come to any of Nibelheim’s festivals as far as Cloud could remember, nor visited their families. He had no idea why, but suspected it might have to do with why they left for the other continent in the first place.

There was no reason for the two of them to ignore a group of travelers, least of all a group with children, but when Lightning knocked on the door, no one answered it. He knocked louder and then yelled out that there were children in need of help outside. There was still no response. Finally, he just kicked the door down off its frame and went inside. Vincent was close behind him, and Cloud right after that. The boy only got two steps inside before Vincent suddenly grabbed him and wheeled Cloud around to push him back out of the building.

Blood. The air had _reeked_ of blood, the smell a physical assault on Cloud’s nose the moment he set foot in the entry hall.

“Stay here,” Vincent said curtly and then stepped after Lightning, his gun out of its holster.

“What’s going,” and Mrs. Danvers stopped there, the smell of slaughter reaching her nose and turning her face pale.

It took almost ten minutes before the two men returned. Lightning had the keys to what Cloud guessed were the vehicles in his hand and Vincent was carrying a bag that clanked slightly with each movement. They both had something wet and shiny covering the bottoms of their boots.

“Two dead men in there,” Lightning said without preamble. “Most of the place was trashed, but we found a bit of canned goods that looked okay. Thing is, the landline was cut and I’m not sure if they had any satellite phones or a PHS to use for a backup. Given the state of things, I’d say if they did it was almost certainly smashed. So, we can’t call for help, which means if these,” and he held up the jeep keys on one finger, “Are in anyway damaged, we are going to have to walk all the way down to Merry Weather.”

It was a nasty announcement. Cloud had been telling himself not to get his hopes up, but after two days of traveling over the hard mountain road on foot, the thought of driving the rest of the way on a soft cushioned seat had been a beautiful dream. From the looks on everyone else’s faces, he had not been the only one. To learn that not only would they have to walk all the way down after all, but that there was nothing to do but keep walking even after that….

“You’re kidding,” Nicholas said. “Just getting down from the mountain is going to half-kill nearly all of us. We can’t walk god knows how many miles to the next town.”

“What else can we do?” Lightning asked irritably. “The plan was to call for help, but that’s out. No one knows what happened to Nibelheim, so there won’t be any rescue operations, and I have no idea how long it will take a search team to show up asking why no one’s heard from those two guys inside. If you want to stay and take your chances here at the station, I’ll be sure to come back as soon as I get to Merry Weather and let them know what’s going on. Bear in mind, you’d be shacking up in a bloody mess that is going to be a buffet signal to any predator with a working nose for the next fifty miles. And I’m not even going to mention Sephiroth, who I’m pretty sure is the one who did this. There wasn’t any damage to the door – somebody let whatever killed them in. Get it?”

There was silence.

“You think he’s nearby?” Cloud asked quietly.

“Probably,” Lightning admitted without a trace of hesitation. “This is the easiest way off the mountain. Any other path would have him going over rough country or through the old caves to Rocket Town.”

Nicholas looked ready to bring up another point, but Karen laid her hand on his arm and he grew quiet. His wife gave him a look that said patience, and then turned to Lightning and Vincent. “How about we look at the cars before we decide anything? They might be in perfect condition.”

No one believed that, but it could have been true. The garage was behind the outpost, hidden from view. Vincent took the lead and when he stopped cold at the corner leading to the back of the building, Cloud already knew what they were going to see. The sliding garage doors had been ripped from their tracks and lay flat on the dirt. The two jeeps, monstrous cars that could have driven over mountain and snow, had been literally sliced apart. Pieces were flung all over the place, and gasoline and oil were leaking everywhere.

“ _Shit_ ,” someone spat, and Cloud nodded in horrified agreement.

“He must be frustrated,” Vincent said quietly. “Just destroying the tires or the engines would have been enough. He could have broken away the steering wheels. This says anger.”

“Yeah, a psychotic SOLDIER rip-off is so much better to deal with when they’re angry,” Justin muttered.

“They are, actually,” Vincent said, in a matter-of-fact manner. “Angry means stupid.”

They stared at the mangled wrecks of the vehicles for a few more seconds, then Lightning awkwardly coughed to draw attention towards him.

“I…can get rid of the bodies easily enough, but someone needs to help with the blood.”

 

* * *

  

‘Get rid of the bodies’ meant ‘set them on fire with my materia’. Cloud left the moment he had finished saying prayers for David and Noels, the smell of cooking meat bringing back horrible memories fresh buried. Inside the outpost, the women, George, Allen and Nicholas were scrubbing up the blood with any sheets, towels and rags they could get their hands on. A lemon scented disinfectant was being splashed over everything, and the soiled clothes were all dumped in a soon-to-be-burned bag. Even with all of that effort, Cloud could still smell blood everywhere and he would bet his boots the monsters would too.

In the kitchen area, Vincent and Justin were trying – and failing, it seemed – to piece together a working phone from the wreck that had been the landline unit. A spare phone cord had been found somewhere, but the unit itself was smashed to bits. Whatever magic was needed to fix it was likely beyond the power of electrical tape and super glue, but Cloud wished them the best of luck all the same.

The children were sleeping in the bedroom. Tifa and Missy were crammed together on the left twin bed, and Timmy was sprawled on the right one. Cloud tugged off his hiking boots and left them next to his backpack. His dad’s hunting knife was taken out and left on the nightstand in easy reach. Timmy was a deadweight, but Cloud managed to shove him closer to the wall and claim a spot by the edge of the bed. The exhaustion he had been holding at bay all day finally caught up to him in a rush. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

Sleep.

 

* * *

 

 

Noise.

Cloud’s hand was reaching for the knife before he even remembered it was there. Then he stopped. The noise was a voice. No, two voices. The small window above Timmy’s sleeping form was partially open to let fresh air in and lessen the smell. Outside the bedroom door, Cloud could hear the rest of the group going on with their work. But outside….

“…find anything?”

Vincent.

“No, nothing.”

Lighting.

“If he is still nearby, I can’t tell. He’s better at this suppression thing than me. Kind of unfair, really.”

“Don’t complain. Knowing what you do, do you really want to be better at it?”

“…No. Better he comes after me. At Nibelheim… what he did-“

“Was not your fault. You did not know you had a madman following you.”

“Sure doesn’t feel that way. How are things with the phone working out?”

“Not well. Repairing it was a fool’s hope. We will have to walk to Merry Weather after all. I wonder if it would be better to leave some of them here.”

Silence and then a choking sound, followed by “Are you _insane?!_ When he comes back-“

“ _If._ _If_ he comes back. He has already killed the two personnel stationed here and destroyed the vehicles, so why would he have stayed? We would know by now if he were still around. If he really is more interested in gathering more of JENOVA, there is no place nearby for him to do so. He would have to move on to a place that contained those samples.”

“I…You’re probably right, but it just… it feels wrong.”

“I could stay with them. I’m not so clumsy anymore and if you are gone, he would have no reason to press an attack.”

“Except out of spite.”

“That would not help his goals.”

“Oddly enough, he never seems to care about that part. He _loves_ hurting people, Vincent. Making them feel weak, useless, and stupid. Killing the last of Nibelheim’s people while I was away from them is something I can see him doing with a smile on his face.”

A pause.

“…He truly hates you that much?”

A bitter laugh. “I was a wimp. I was a no-name, country boy, loser who always just barely scraped by in everything and _I threw him into a reactor core_. Then he came back when I was half-insane wreck and I beat him _again_. And then _again_. He thinks he’s the greatest thing alive, the destined son of a god who will remake the world in his image. He thinks he’s the golden boy, the shining general who never failed, the warrior who never lost a fight, the perfect human being, and I was supposed to just be another one of his toy soldiers. He is completely and utterly insane, but he believes that like nothing else. He is the chosen one and I punched his face in, repeatedly. Vincent, he doesn’t hate me. He _despises_ me.”

More silence.

“…I suppose we can make a sled of some kind from the jeep hood that was not bisected,” Vincent finally said. “The children could ride on it with the supplies. Either you or I pulling it would lighten the load for everyone else.”

“Great plan,” Lightning said. “Think you can get it done tonight?”

“Yes. Are you turning in?”

“Yeah. I haven’t slept in three days now. I’m ready to fall over. Keep watch tonight, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t. Goodnight.”

“Mmhm.”

Footsteps. A door opening and shutting. Heavier footsteps in the hall. Fading footsteps outside. The sound of someone settling down outside the bedroom door. Silence.

Cloud stayed awake for another twenty minutes, but nothing else occurred. Eventually, he fell asleep again.

 

* * *

  

They set out again in the morning. Vincent had indeed crafted a sled (or something like it) from the remains of a jeep’s hood. Even with all of their meager supplies piled onto it, there was still enough room for Missy, Timmy and Tifa to pile on. Vincent took the first shift for pulling them and Cloud decided to walk, rather than to crowd the sled even more. His feet no longer ached so much, so it was not much hardship. A night inside and on somewhat soft furniture had done wonders to restore the party’s strength. Karen and Nicholas actually seemed to be somewhat cheerful, and Old Mr. Danvers hardly limped at all. If it weren’t for the fact that all they knew and loved lay in ashes behind them, it could almost have been a good day.

As he walked, Cloud kept turning the previous night’s conversation over and over in his head. He was almost certain he was misremembering parts of it – who the hell lived through falling into a reactor core? – but there were parts that stuck out clearly.

Lightning _had_ been the reason that man had come to Nibelheim. The man in black who was probably still nearby and probably going to try to kill them again just to mess with Lightning.

Whether it was better to stay or leave him behind was the crux of the matter. Just how sure of a thing was it that the man would prioritize the villagers over these jenova pieces? If he came back and Lightning and Vincent were not there _(silver light and red blood flying through the flames and steel ringing everywhere)_ it was not going to be much of a fight.

There was probably a better way of doing it that worked with subtlety and cunning and all that, but Cloud was twitchy and thirteen. Subtlety and cunning were not his strong suites.

“I need to pee,” Cloud announced.

Lightning glanced over at him and nodded. The group stopped and the two blondes of the group wandered away from them. There was a bend in the road ahead and they went there. When they were out of sight and, Cloud hoped, out of earshot, he bluntly asked Lightning, “How safe are we with you?”

Lightning blinked. “I… I would never hurt any of – “

“Not like that,” Cloud said irritably. Lightning was a bad liar, he decided. Even worse than him. “I mean, how much safer are we with you than going our own way? If you left us some materia and Vincent’s gun, we could probably manage just fine now. Every second you’re with us, that’s another chance for that man to come looking for you and go after us instead.”

That got Lightning’s attention. His glowing blue eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to let him hurt anyone else.”

“You kind of suck at that,” Cloud said bluntly. “Look, do you think this guy is still here or do you think he went after those jenova things after he sliced up the outpost?”

“How’d you… crap, the window was open, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Now, tell me.”

Lightning looked like he wanted to be anywhere else. “I’m… _almost_ sure he’s putting the JENOVA pieces over me. He actually needs those. Killing me is kind of his hobby.”

“So you do know him.”

“I.. um, kind of? Look, it’s complicated, we should go back - “

“Is he really Sephiroth?”

“Ye- um, no… Kind of, just - “

“Did you really not know he was following when you came to Nibelheim?”

“ _No!_ ” Lightning yelled. It was a bit frightening. “If I’d known that bastard was behind me, I would have torn him apart before he ever came near Nibelheim! I didn’t – I never – “

“You never meant to leave them in my path,” a dark baritone said from above.

Lightning’s hand was on his sword and there was a five-foot long, one-foot wide, two-inch thick slab of razor sharp metal armed and ready before Cloud could blink. It also took about that long for Lightning to grab Cloud off the ground and throw him a dozen feet away. Cloud heard “Get Vincent and tell everyone else to run.” Then he moved his head and looked up from the rocky mountain path.

The man was standing on a very tiny ledge, but he seemed perfectly at ease. His coat was a bit dirtier than Cloud remembered from the newspaper photos, but he supposed that should be expected. Then Cloud wondered why the hell he was focusing on the man’s coat, only to realize he could not bring himself to look at the man’s face. That would not do. The man killed his mother. Cloud could be angry at him, but he could _not_ be scared of him. Not if he wanted to get justice someday.

Cloud looked up.

The man was smiling slightly, at some joke only he could see. There was something wrong with his eyes, beyond the fact that they glowed green, but it was too far away for Cloud to make out. No matter how much he stared at those eyes, he could not see….

“Well, I never thought I’d see anything like this. Life is full of little surprises.”

The man looked _right at him_ and Cloud felt his bones turn to water.

“Good to meet you, Cloud.”


	5. Chapter 5

Not moving.

His body was not moving. Why?

He felt so weak, even more so then when he had gotten the flu for a week. Lightning had told him to move, so why was he not moving?

 _‘Get up’_ , Cloud thought. _‘Get up now or you’re going to die.’_

He felt like he was floating, like he was dreaming even. Except it was real. All of it was real.

“Kid, _get the hell out of here!”_

Lightning was yelling at him.

Somehow, Cloud got to his feet.

“Already needing someone else to do your thinking for you? You never had much free will.”

And then the man was standing in front of Cloud and reaching –

“ _DOWN!”_

Cloud dropped back to the earth and something _swooshed_ over him. When he raised his head again, Lightning and Maybe-Sephiroth were gone. But….

_CLANGCRASHCLANG!_

He looked up.

And blinked.

Because there was no physical or magical law he knew of that should have allowed for two grown men to fight in _midair_.

“ _Keep moving!_ ” Lightning yelled.

Cloud obeyed.

Dirt kicked up into the air as he ran, trying not to look behind him. He did not want to see if they were following. Just seeing the man in black standing nearby had loosened all his bones and turned him to jelly. If he saw them fighting and the man was still coming after him –

And then Vincent caught him by the shoulder. Cloud stopped too quickly, his feet flying out from beneath him, but Vincent kept him upright. The words tripped out of his mouth and became a jumbled mess.

“Lightning needs help it’s that Sephiroth guy back there he needs help please!”

“I had guessed so,” Vincent said calmly, like nothing at all was wrong. “The rest of the group is heading down the path. Follow them, quickly.”

Then he was gone, running impossibly fast towards the sound of crashing steel. Cloud thought Vincent’s order was the best bit of common sense he had acquired all week. He took off running as fast as he could down the mountain road. As he passed by the spot where he had last seen the group, he saw the sled laying abandoned on the road. It did not look like anyone had bothered to grab anything off of it, likely figuring it would just be dead weight. With Merry Weather only one or two more days away they could probably manage without the food, but the water? They needed that. He made a sharp detour towards the misshapen lump of bags and started tugging on the rope holding them down. He had just reached bag holding the water bottles when he paused, noticing that the sound of fighting seemed to have stopped.

Had it already ended?

They were fighting the greatest SOLDIER alive, there was no way they –

_“CLOUD!”_

It was the first time Lightning had ever said his name. The bizarre shock of it was enough to scramble Cloud’s brain for a moment ( _he had only ever called Cloud “kid” before. Why? Everyone else was addressed by name_ ), stalling the realization of just _why_ Lightning would be yelling at him. That he was not murdered horribly then and there was only due to Vincent’s freakishly improbable quick draw skill.

The gunshot was a comparably minor thing compared to the massive weight slamming into him and knocking him head-over-heels up the road. It only lasted a small second and then something grabbed his right foot in a vice grip that _shattered_ the bones. Cloud could feel them break, every one of them. Before he even had time to open his mouth to scream, the horrible grip tugged him and turned his momentum to the left where the hard wall of the mountain waited. Then it threw him.

It was only after things had calmed down that he had time to process all of this. As it happened, what Cloud experienced was _yelling/gunshot/ow/tumbling/ **AUGH** /flying?/what?_ The last was the split second confusion following yet another abrupt change in velocity as Lightning appeared out of nowhere to grab Cloud before he could smash against the mountain and redecorate it with his insides. Lightning kept going with his chosen direction and Cloud had a dizzying view of the road shrinking beneath them as Lightning ran up the sheer mountainside like it was nothing.

Below and ahead was the Maybe-Sephiroth man, his sword _flash-flash-flashing_ in time with Vincent’s gunshots, and Cloud felt part of his brain explode when he realized, going by the sparks that flew every time it happened, that Vincent’s pistol shots were being deflected at close range with a sword. No spells that he could see, just straight out “fuck you ammunition, blades are better.” At any other point in his life he would have found that amazing, but all it did then was hammer in how utterly screwed they all were. Then the scene vanished as they reached a divide in the mountain, the rock disappearing beneath Lightning’s feet to open out into one of the many miniscule valleys found in the mountain range.

Lightning set down a very dizzy Cloud and immediately went to the boy’s injured foot. Cloud, now in a relationship with gravity that made sense, was able to focus on the feeling of multiple small bone breaks, torn flesh, and gushing blood. He did the rational thing and screamed his head off.

“Did he get anything else?! Cloud, did he hurt anything else?!” Lighting was yelling. Cloud wished he would shut up, that he would go away, that he had never come to Nibelheim. Everything had been fine before Lightning came.

Lightning, oblivious to Cloud’s feelings, cursed when the boy failed to answer him and dug through one of his many pockets. He came out with a purple materia marble, which immediately took the place of one of the other orbs in his bracer. It came alive with purple light as Lightning leaned over Cloud and began tearing at the destroyed boot. Every movement sent white-hot lances of pain up Cloud’s whole leg. His foot was nothing but a supernova of agony.

“I’m going to fix your foot now, but you have to hold still. Understand?” Lightning was calm again, or what passed for calm in the situation. Cloud hated him even more for it.

“Just hold still and I’ll – “

Then the new materia flared a short, sharp burst of light beyond its earlier glow. Before Cloud could blink, Lightning had scooped him up and was jumping forward through the divide and out onto the slope. Why soon became apparent. The shelf they had been on disappeared in a shining flash, grinding down the mountain with the loud rumble of stone-on-stone. Silver hair and a black coat flew after Lightning, long steel singing in the wind. The pain was forgotten. Cloud grabbed Lightning’s shoulder as hard as he could in the awkward, one-armed bridal hold Lightning had him in.

“Look out!” was on the tip of Cloud’s tongue, but Lightning somehow already knew. The monstrous sword swung around Lightning’s back, deflecting the cut without Lightning even turning his head. The long sword veered off to the left and the man had to follow it to avoid letting go. Then he landed on the mountainside, kicked off and came at them again. Lightning, somehow, realized it and twisted in midair. The sword whistled harmlessly overhead and Lightning swung the edge of his own sword up to slash at the bad man. Maybe-Sephiroth parried and used the force to push himself further away.

Then the mountain side was right there and Lightning had to do another one of those impossible mid-air twists to land on his feet. Every bone in Cloud’s body rattled at the impact – the bones in his injured foot began howling again, so Cloud obliged them by also screaming – and it only got worse when Lightning started running _down_ the side of the mountain to the valley below, his sword flashing out every second to block an attack from the enemy.

“ _Could use a hand here, Vincent!”_ Lightning yelled. The silver-haired man laughed. Lightning attacked with his namesake, but Maybe-Sephiroth let it hit his sword and, unbelievably, that seemed to stop the attack.

“He won’t be joining us,” the man said, sounding very satisfied. “The monster is likely bleeding out even as we speak.”

You’re the monster, Cloud wanted to say, but he kept his mouth shut and held onto Lightning even tighter. Lightning was angry, Cloud knew. He could see the glowing blue eyes narrow at the thought of Vincent, but Lightning said nothing back to the man. Instead, he spoke to Cloud.

“Try to hold on tight and don’t scream again. That hurts,” Lightning instructed, and then he raised his sword in one hand to the bad man.

“You’re going to fight me with that hindrance? This won’t be any fun at all,” Maybe-Sephiroth said, sounding amused.

“Not for you, no,” Lightning said with finality. Cloud wondered about that, until he saw the red materia in the huge sword start to glow.

Cloud knew about the different types of materia. He had seen a few spells fired off by the general store owner during a demonstration at last year’s New Year festival. They had only been low level green ones though. Common ice and fire spells. He had never seen a summoning materia before. No one in Nibelheim had anything so destructive.

Lightning, for whatever reason, did.

A glowing circle of black light sprang up around the enemy, cutting him off from them. He stopped, somehow not sliding down the rock despite his momentum, and glared at Lightning. His face twisted, rage and –fear? – making him a new kind of terrifying.

“I _will not_ suffer these –“

CLANG!

The first sword cut straight through his middle.

A suit of armor – and it was only a suit of armor, surely, because no human was ever big enough to wear that thing – with a long plume dangling from the helmet and a heavy cape flew back into the dark void that had sprung up at Maybe-Sephiroth’ s feet, leaving the man to somehow hold his torso together. Except, no, he hadn’t been cut! The clanging sound had been a parry, not the armor moving. The long, thin blade had somehow been enough to stave off an attack from a sword that made Lightning’s look tiny.

And then there was another knight springing from the void! There was another sharp ring of steel on steel! The second knight vanished as Maybe-Sephiroth staggered back from the force of the blow. That was all Cloud saw before Lightning’s jump down to a small shelf left his tongue bleeding when his teeth crashed together. He winced, shutting his eyes against the pain, and when he opened them again he couldn’t see what was happening with the summon materia. They were going further down, towards where one of the rivers carved a channel through the mountain.

“Wait!” Cloud yelled, his pain taking a back seat on his priority list. “You have to make sure it kills him!”

“That’s the plan, but I have to get you safe first!” Lightning yelled back.

They were racing down the mountain at a frightening pace, Lightning’s impeccable footwork being the only reason they still managed to stay upright. Cloud had no idea how he was able to do it while holding a buster-style sword in one hand and a teenager in the other, but Lightning did not seem to have any trouble at all. He stopped just before the drop into the water and set Cloud down.

“This’ll have to do. Try to stay quiet until I’m done,” Lightning said. Then he was running back up the slope, leaving Cloud to awkwardly hug his body against the rock and try not to put any weight on his injured foot. The boy looked up and found that he could just barely make out what was happening where they had been.

There were still knights diving at the dark man from the void. Lightning paid them no mind, sprinting back and jumping into the air in an arcing dive that would carry him right on top of his enemy. The big sword swung down at the end of Lightning’s descent. Maybe-Sephiroth managed to dodge away, but the next knight to come at him seemed to have clipped _something_ because that shining sword wavered and dropped a moment, before coming back up, but then….

Cloud could never tell how Lightning did it, but his strikes were always in perfect time with those of the summoned knights. Every time, he managed to drive the man in black into a position that left him too slow to completely block or dodge the next sword; never crippling, never defeating, but adding cut upon cut and all the while Lightning’s sword was glowing brighter and brighter with a buildup of energy.

And then the summoning circle vanished.

The man in black disappeared. Cloud’s brain only belatedly realized that he had jumped up into the air. He hung there like a massive black bird, kept aloft by the sheer anger he emitted. Lightning was only a moment behind him, the gigantic sword swinging up for a cut. Steel met steel and a sharp sound rang as the collision of blades forced both fighters away from each other. They fell to the ground, landed on their feet and rushed at each other again.

The sound of their swords meeting was so loud Cloud was amazed that neither weapon shattered. They just kept hammering at each, trying to find an opening that would end the fight. It only stopped when Lightning did something – probably a spell – that caused the whole mountain side to tremble and a large chunk of stone to powderize beneath the man in black’s feet. Maybe-Sephiroth had to move down the mountainside then and Cloud could see him without that faint smile he had worn earlier.

…Wait.

 _‘Shit, he’s getting closer to me,’_ Cloud realized.

Did Lightning realize it? Probably not, given that he seemed hyper focused on the fight. But _that man_ definitely noticed, because his eyes narrowed and then the sword was raised….!

“ _Lightning!_ ”

The blond swordsman realized what was happening the moment Cloud yelled. Ice filled the air and hurtled in long spears to plant in front of Cloud. They slowed the man down for a just one second, but that was enough. Fire followed after them, forcing him away. He took to the air over the river and Lightning charged, passing by close enough that Cloud could see the sweat on his face, before launching himself after the man in black.

They both landed on the opposite slope, the man in black retreating upwards, with Lightning slashing every time he was in range. When he was not, spells burned, froze and shattered the rock as they missed by a moment the man that was their true target. Maybe-Sephiroth was being driven upwards, retreating even though he held the high ground.

 _‘Lightning’s going to win,’_ Cloud thought. _‘He’s going to kill this bastard, and mom and everyone else will be avenged.’_  

Faintly, he could hear Lightning say, “No more returns for you!”

(And what he could not hear: “Hm. Is that what you think?”)

There was a flash of silver.

It did not pierce Lightning. He dodged, letting it pass him by. That the sword did not pull back was something he surely must have noted, but ultimately seemed to ignore. Cloud couldn’t blame him. If he was fighting someone who seemed to be General Sephiroth’s evil twin, he would certainly focus on nothing but the task at hand. Even so…

(The massive sword separated into seven different components, each flung into the air for easy use.)

To just let the sword pass by him without anything more than a cursory note of it….

(Omni-Slash was an old friend, one/two/three/four/five/six/seven/eight/nine/ten/eleven/twelve/thirteen/fourteen hits, then come together and _slam_ it through the black coat to end it.)

That seemed awfully stupid, Cloud thought, as the sword careened toward him.

(Why was the bastard still smiling? Why was he _always_ smiling?! He’d lost!)

He could not pull himself up the mountain side.

(“I will return, Cloud. We will finish our business then. Until then…”)

He could not go left or right in time.

(“…I suggest you mind what’s yours.”)

Nothing to do….

(He vanished in a swirl of black ash, not even a body left behind. Of course not. He wasn’t of the Planet anymore.)

…but let go.

(What had he meant? Mind what’s…. _Fuck._ )

The water was fast, and cold, and dark, and deep. Cloud gave up on kicking quickly, his foot hurt far too much for it, and tried to claw his way to the surface again. But it was so hard and his arms were so tired it hurt… so… much….

(Cloud sheathed First Tsurugi, jumped for the river and prayed.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As funny as Cloud just pulling the Knights of the Round out every time Sephiroth showed up and swatting him down like a fly with a newspaper would be, it would make for a very boring adventure story; not to mention you would also have to explain why he didn't just do it to finish the battle in the crater. So, here's my explanation - Sephiroth, being Sephiroth, can block, dodge and parry the knights with some success, providing Cloud isn't distracting him. 
> 
> Omnislash still fucks him up, though. 
> 
> The materia Future Cloud pulled out to use was a mastered Protect. He figured he'd need it to keep little him safe and turns out he was right.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cloud is getting sick of being brushed off and Cloud is still so not ready to discuss anything.

Everything was spinning.

That was the first thing Cloud thought when he became aware again. Everything was still spinning and cold and wet. He was still in the river. His back hurt. Actually, his back, neck and head hurt. Weirdly, his foot did not.

“Are you awake now?”

Cloud opened his eyes and saw nothing. Starting to panic, he raised his hands up and dragged them through the blank space in front of him, trying to touch something.

“Hey, over here.”

A large, warm hand wrapped around his right wrist and stilled him. Shortly after that, the green glow of a materia orb from Lightning’s sword came to life. It only gave off enough light for Cloud to see Lightning’s face and chest. Everything else remained black. However, that was enough to jolt his brain’s higher functions awake. He was aching along his back because he was laying on a hard stone floor. The water of the river was no longer pulling him along. Although still cold and damp, he was able to breathe and that alone was an improvement.

The nausea was still a pain, though.

Rolling over caused his stomach to heave violently and Cloud found himself regurgitating his breakfast in very short order. Lightning helped him get onto his knees and held back his hair. The tie he used for his ponytail had vanished somewhere between falling into the water and waking up.

“Feel better now?” Lightning asked after it stopped. It was a stupid question and Cloud told him so. Nibelheim burning was the worst day of his life, but this was shaping up to be the second worst.

“Eh, right, sorry,” Lightning said. “Good news is, Sephiroth’s gone. He won’t bother us for a while. Bad news is, we’ve gone so far off trail that I’m only a little certain of where we are. We should get close to Merry Weather if we head south and west, but that means either going down the river or across the mountains.”

There was a pause after that, where Cloud was doubtless expected to put in his two gil as to which path they should take. Instead, he vomited again.

Lightning sighed and reached for Cloud’s hair. 

 

* * *

 

 

Another Cure spell, a short nap and a slightly waterlogged granola bar later, Cloud felt vaguely alive again. Lightning helped him stand up and walk off the stiffness that came from sleeping on stone. Through pacing and several collisions, Cloud found that the cave measured about twelve steps deep and fifteen steps wide. It had two small holes in the back, neither of them big enough to stick a fist through, and the front opened up into the river, with a low hanging shelf of rock blocking off anything beyond the water from sight. Cloud imagined Lightning drifting downriver in a fast current, dragging Cloud’s dead weight and that ridiculous sword with him, and could not imagine how the man had managed to find this place.

“Luck,” Lightning said shamelessly. He was stretching his arms and legs, trying to get his blood flowing again after hours of sitting on the cold stone and waiting for Cloud to awaken. “I was just trying to keep my head above the water and nearly brained myself on that lip of rock when I came around the bend. I ducked under it and saw empty space.”

He finished his stretches and gathered his things. The little pack he wore at the small of his back, which was stuffed full of medicine, a few snacks and more materia, and the massive sword were the sum total of that list. Everything else Lightning had had was left behind on the group’s sled in the mountain pass and was probably still there unless Vincent took it down with him. If that thought bothered him, Lightning was not showing it.

“Do you think Vincent is alright?” Cloud asked at the river’s edge.

The darkness made Lightning’s face almost impossible to see, but Cloud still made out the firm nod. “Yes, no doubt. Vincent is much harder to kill than you’d think and Sephiroth loves mind games. He was probably just exaggerating the situation to worry me.”

“Will he come looking for us then?”

“Hm, maybe. I think he’d be more likely to stick with the others. Our trail ends at the river and he has no way of knowing where we’d come out. My guess is he’s gone back to catch up with the rest of the group and is trying to hustle them down to Merry Weather. When they’re safe, he can come back and look for as long as he wants.”

Lightning was staring at the river, his head cocked at an angle. Cloud had a feeling he knew what Lightning was thinking about – how far until they reached civilization again?

“I’m going to take us over the mountains,” Lightning eventually said. Decision made, he started back towards the other side of the cave. Perplexed, Cloud followed him.

“No idea where this river empties or what’s living in it,” Lightning explained as he went. “At least with the mountains, we’ll have ground beneath our feet and I’m pretty familiar with the monsters.”

They stopped in front of the two small holes, bright sunshine peeking through to them. Cloud shut his eyes against the sudden refraction of light as Lightning carefully maneuvered his buster sword out of the harness. Their method of exit suddenly seemed clear to him. Hastily backing away, Cloud asked, “So, when were you here last?”

Just as he was beginning to swing his sword, Lightning hesitated. He turned his head back to look at Cloud. “When was I what?”

The light was better at this end of the cave. Cloud only needed one look at Lightning’s face to know the man was hiding something.

“When were you here last? You kind of said you were from this area, right?”

“That… uh….” Lightning seemed to droop, the sword lowering a few inches. Then whatever was troubling him passed and he turned away, the sword going back into its ready position. “A question for later,” Lightning said evasively, and swung.

Cloud felt the ground beneath his feet shake as the back of the cave shattered apart. Sunlight flooded into the small enclosure and blinded him, even as the ringing in his ears deafened him. Hissing in pain, Cloud felt Lightning’s arm circle around his waist and tighten. There was a horrible moment of acceleration and displacement, then he was on a stone incline and Lightning let him go. When Cloud could see again, they were fifty feet away from the new hole in the rock.

“Sun’s rising that way,” Lightning said, pointing to the star half visible above the mountain tops. “Which means west is that way. So we want to go _that_ way,” he pointed diagonally from the river. “I can carry you over it, but we won’t be able to move very fast. If we encounter any monsters, I’ll try to outrun them, but we might have to fight. If that happens, do what I tell you, understand?”

Huffing, Cloud nodded. Then, feeling more irritated by the moment, “I still want an explanation for all of this. When are you going to talk about it?”

Lightning frowned. “You don’t really need – “

” _If you say I don’t really need to know, I will stab you with your own stupid sword!”_ Cloud screamed.

Silence.

“My mom is _dead!_ My town is _gone!_ Some crazy man who either is or looks like Sephiroth tried to kill me and _knows my name!_ It’s your fault, all of it, I know it is! Why did you come to Nibelheim?! Why was he after you?!”

Lightning… looked sad.

Cloud just hated him even more for that.

What did he have to be sad about?

“… I’ll explain as much of it as I can when it’s safe,” Lightning said finally. He turned his back to Cloud and made a ‘come here’ gesture with his right hand.

“When?” Cloud barked. “When are you going to say it’s safe?”

“… When we meet up with Vincent,” Lightning said with finality.

 

* * *

 

 

Traveling on Lightning’s back as they jumped through the mountains was the closest Cloud had ever come to flying and he hated every moment of it. They were going far too fast, every time he pushed off for another jump was another jolt to Cloud’s body and they were attacked _in midair_ twice by monsters. By the time they finally found the road again, Cloud was ready to pass out. Lightning let him off gently, but he still fell to the road and did not bother trying to get up.

Lightning looked vaguely ashamed. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”

Cloud flipped him off and rolled over.

Lightning sighed and wandered off for a minute. When Cloud could be bothered to look up again, he found Lightning pacing back and forth over the road, staring down intently at his feet.

“What are you doing?” Cloud asked.

Lightning looked over at him and gestured at the stone road. “Trying to see if we’re ahead or behind of the others. There isn’t a lot of dirt for footprints, so I haven’t figured out which yet.”

“Does it matter? We could just wait for them at Merry Weather,” Cloud argued.

“I suppose not, now that Sephiroth is taken care of,” Lightning admitted. “Still, I was hoping to meet up with them tonight.”

“Are we stopping here for now?” Cloud asked.

“Might as well,” Lightning sighed.

They had no tents, blankets or firewood. Lightning slammed the tip of his ridiculous sword through the rock and sat back against it. That was the extent of his camp preparations. Cloud received slightly more care. He got the folded up puzzle sword harness to use for a very lumpy pillow and Lightning used a very weak Fire spell to warm the air around him. When that failed to last more than a minute, Lightning sighed and moved his sword closer so Cloud could lie next to his legs.

Missing a boot and sock, his bare foot shoved underneath Lightning’s knees for warmth, Cloud tried and failed to fall asleep for an hour before giving it up as a lost cause.

“Will you tell me now?” Cloud asked.

“When we find Vincent,” Lightning muttered quietly.

Oddly, Cloud was not angry about it. He felt drained.

“You’re just stalling every time I ask you,” Cloud pointed out. “Why? What are you so worried about telling me?”

“I’m not worried,” Lightning corrected. “It just isn’t your problem.”

“Pretty sure it became my problem a few nights ago,” Cloud countered.

“If I tell you I killed him a few seconds before jumping after you, would that be enough to make you back off?”

“Did you?”

“For now, yes.”

Cloud thought about it and decided that it was not his exhaustion that was confusing him. “That makes no sense.”

“Not much about my life does,” Lightning sighed.

“Why can’t you just give me a straight answer?” Cloud asked and was only mostly successful in keeping the whine out of his voice. Anger was finally beginning to give way, ground down by fear and frustration.

“Because – “ and Lightning stopped there, his one snapped out word halted before others could follow it. Cloud watched him thing, could _see_ him going over whatever unknowable choices he was sorting through, and then saw the resolution show up on his face.

“Because I have no way of proving most of what I’d say, I honestly think it would only upset you more and it might put you in even more danger.”

“From who? You just said you killed the bad man,” Cloud pointed out. Strangely, talking seemed to have the opposite effect he had been hoping for. Cloud could feel himself growing more and more sleepy.

“He wasn’t the only person who wants me dead,” Lightning admitted ruefully. “I’ve got a lot of enemies that I’ll be making pretty soon.”

“That makes less sense,” Cloud whispered.

“Sure does,” Lightning agreed. “It’s the truth, though. I told you I had no proof, so you’ll just have to go with my word. If you still want to know, wait until we find Vincent.”

“One question,” Cloud pressed on. “Then I’ll shut up and sleep.”

“…Fine. _One_ question.”

“Who are you to me?”

Quiet. It was the heavy kind of quiet that had existed in the smoke laden pre-dawn of his mother’s dying breaths.

“I’m… someone you could become, if things were different.”

That is such a copout, Cloud thought wearily, and then finally slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya. 
> 
> For an explanation as to why I've been so quiet for the last year or so, please check out my profile. As it is, I'm getting into writing again.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so here’s the first chapter. Can’t say I’m happy with the title, so expect it to change sooner or later. We’ve had time travel stories where Cloud goes back in time and lands in a younger version of his own body, usually while he’d in the military academy. I’ve seen a few where he retains his own body and lives a separate existence from his younger self (Sinnatious’ The Fifth Act is a really good one), but I don’t think I’ve ever come across one where Older!Cloud gets heavily involved with Younger!Cloud’s life. Like, is-stuck-with-this-kid-for-real involved. This one is going to be along those lines. Little Cloud will be spending the next few years of his life with this mysterious, close-mouthed, often frustrating, sometimes terrifying stranger who looked like his older brother. 
> 
> Expect confusion. And tantrums. And explosions. And Shinra.


End file.
